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It is in any corporation's best interest to retain absolute control over any product it releases into the market. At this time, software vendors represent the most sober push to actualize a new pro-corporate industrial segment by attempting to morph the current free market model of proprietary consumer ownership into a draconian licensing scheme in which the customer no longer owns the software, but is essentially "renting" it from the content creator. This paradigm shift not only corrupts the very essence of capitalism, it has much farther reaching connotations because just to acquire such a license the consumer is forced to sign away their rights to the point that if the content holder even suspects a violation of the ToS, he can de-activate the product while retaining the licensing fees.

When you take into consideration the nature of a corporation, you can start to get a picture of what it will blindly do to survive and expand. A corporation doesn't care about you, it cares about what's in your wallet, and it will do anything and everything to maximize its ability to get it. The transparent goal of any business is to minimize its spending while maximizing yours. So why sell you the product when they can license you the product while tagging you with a long list of what you can and cannot do with the product?

A Corporation will always do whatever it considers to be in its best interest. Every time you read about an alliance or merger between two major corporate entities, take out your wallet and give it a heartfelt kiss goodbye. The Corporation just won, the consumer just lost, the rich just got richer and the rest of us just got pissed on. Excrement rolls downhill, money rolls up and forming alliances just happens to be the best way to reduce competition, reduce choice, raise prices, and implement those draconian licensing schemes outlined above.

If nothing is done to stop this then the infection will spread to every channel of product distribution, and the day will come when you will own nothing. Outrage will become mild outrage. Mild outrage will become uneasy acceptance. Uneasy acceptantce will become acceptance, and acceptance will turn the remaining outraged into outcasts. By the end we will have sold our lethargic souls to buy counterfeit commitments and economic imperialism."

sgeirk writes "The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB),announced the new Soundexchange royalty rates, which could spell the end for many independent webcasters, not to mention the simulcast signals for many commercial and non-commercial radio stations. In a nutshell, rates are going to double between now and 2010. Even webcasters who stream through services like Live365 may be in jeopardy, as such firms' business models never envisioned a royalty rate this high. For more information on this story go here."